Quoting par13del (Reply 184):Since the C-17 line has essentially ended, I am not sure how this is supposed to pressure Airbus to improve?
To my knowledge, no one has any second hand C-17's available for sale.

It seems it would not be difficult to sell some second hand C17s to DE. The Congress kept putting more C17s on the order books even when the USAF said it had enough. Now that Congress has had its pork dinner I would imagine a deal could be struck with a good ally like DE.

Quoting KarelXWB (Reply 199):That means that two of the four engines fitted to each of the 24 aircraft delivered to date – or a total 48 engines -- must now be repaired, a much bigger task than initially anticipated.

Quote:Airbus, however, has presented an ambitious contingency plan. Among representatives of the armaments giant scattered earlier this week a two-sided paper. It's kind of schedule, as and when you want to solve the engine problems.
First, an exchange of individual components is planned, then the aggregate would not so often be serviced. In the long term, so Airbus plane to an "adaptive development of the transmission", which is to solve the problem completely. Even the transitional solution, ie the replacement of parts, but should be available until the end of 2016, the Bundeswehr.

The paper made on Wednesday for more chaos. War in the original version yet of plans for a lengthy "re-design of the transmission," the speech, Airbus corrected hastily during the current session, supposedly there was a translation error.

So at best this will be a two-phase approach, replacing parts in the short term, more substantial changes for the transmission in the longer term.

Add this to the fact that the schedules were a challenge even before the very regrettable hull loss and the program has been dealing with a lot of bad news.

Keep in mind Eders himself referred to the program as "troubled" as per #180 above.

The gun is NOT a precious symbol of freedomIt is a deadly cancer on American societyThose who believe otherwise are consumed by an ideologyThat is impervious to evidence

Quote:The engine problems are ringing alarm bells. According to information obtained by SPIEGEL ONLINE, the possibility of the total failure of the project is being discussed. In the event that the engine problems can't be overcome, the Luftwaffe will have to pull out of the A400 completely and find another transport aircraft [Editor's note - the Germans are already looking into buying 10 C-130Js as a stop-gap between the Transall and A400]

.

Not sure which is right, our earlier report of C-17s or this report of C-130Js as possible stopgaps.

The gun is NOT a precious symbol of freedomIt is a deadly cancer on American societyThose who believe otherwise are consumed by an ideologyThat is impervious to evidence

Today, Bloomberg has a pretty complete update of the A400M concerns in Germany ( http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articl...ered-by-delayed-airbus-a400m-plane ). It repeats the issues about the engine gearbox and the fuselage cracking as well as saying there is more and more consideration of alternate ways of meeting the nations's needs. Regrettably the otherwise good article really dropped the ball by saying the Transall was made by Lockheed!

It gave one example of how A400M has impacted Germany's military:

Quote:Germany’s support mission for Kurdish forces fighting Islamic State in Iraq offers an example of the dramatic shortage in airlift capability. In September 2014, the Bundeswehr needed six days and four Transall planes, after the first three broke down, to transport anti-tank systems and guns to the fighters. In Mali, Transall planes have to take over cargo in Gao and fly it to the conflict zone in Bamako because the A400Ms still lack a defense system.

"Air transport gives the soldiers a feeling of security,” Bartels said. “If the German army already runs into problems when it has to change its contingents, nobody wants to think about a scenario where urgent air transport would be needed."

With regard to the fuselage cracks, it says:

Quote:Airbus is grappling with two sets of technical issues with the A400M: cracking in some of the center fuselage panels where the wing attaches to the body of the plane and faulty engine gearboxes that will need fixing and eventual replacement.

Hard to argue that the A400M is now really impacting its customers in a negative way.

Quote:The issue was first identified in 2011 in tests before the plane went into service, Airbus said in an e-mailed statement. The company has agreed with the European Air Safety Agency and A400M customers on solutions that are currently being implemented.

“As part of the normal quality control processes in the A400M fleet we have identified a material issue,” Airbus said in a statement late Friday. “It concerns a previously unknown cracking behavior of an aluminum alloys material. The issue is not impacting flight safety and does not require any immediate measures beyond a program of inspections and repairs that can be incorporated into the normal maintenance and upgrades schedules.”

So it's good to know it's not a safety issue, but it certainly will impact aircraft availability.

As said earlier it's no surprise that problems crop up. It'll be interesting to see how the customers deal with them.

The gun is NOT a precious symbol of freedomIt is a deadly cancer on American societyThose who believe otherwise are consumed by an ideologyThat is impervious to evidence

Sure would like to see the AD on the metal cracking and understand the exact alloy they were (are?) using.. it seems remarkable that suddenly an alloy develops an unknown cracking issue if the alloy has extensive prior use... the idea that the cracking is not a flight safety item is curious as well unless it is limited to aero dynamic fairings hopefully aft of then engines.

It also sounds like the OEM doesn't want to delay deliveries by using replacement material on delivered a/c. hence the long lead time for repair.

I also hope they've done their homework if there is a material switch.. unlike another manufacturers titanium to aluminum forging switch a few years ago.

Quoting kanban (Reply 2):Sure would like to see the AD on the metal cracking and understand the exact alloy they were (are?) using.. it seems remarkable that suddenly an alloy develops an unknown cracking issue if the alloy has extensive prior use...

I wonder if it the same alloy as was used in the A380 rib feet.

The gun is NOT a precious symbol of freedomIt is a deadly cancer on American societyThose who believe otherwise are consumed by an ideologyThat is impervious to evidence

Quote:FRANKFURT: Airbus chief Tom Enders conceded in a newspaper interview Sunday that some of the “massive problems” dogging the European airplane manufacturer’s new military transporter, the A400M, were of the group’s own making.
“We underestimated the engine problems,” Enders told the Sunday newspaper Bild am Sonntag.
At the start of the programme, Airbus had “let itself be persuaded by some well-known European leaders into using an engine made by an inexperienced consortium,” Enders said.
Furthermore, it had let itself be roped into assuming full responsibility for this new type of turbo-prop engine, he continued.
“These are two massive problems which we’re now paying for.”
But in addition to the “insufficient quality of the supplier … home-made problems are also playing a role,” Enders said.

So it's interesting to me that Airbus is fully responsible for problems with the engines, and that Enders admits that some of the problems that are now becoming manifest ( perhaps the cracking issue? ) were made in house.

Quote:The cracking issue was first identified in 2011 during tests before the aircraft became operational, according to Airbus, although it has been reported that the company was aware of the insufficient quality of aluminium alloys as early as 2008. At the time, Airbus had decided to reinforce the alloy with composite material to save time and money.

and

Quote:Moreover, the replacement of crack-affected parts lacks comprehensive and long-term solutions, as the producing company Premium AEROTEC (located in Varel, Germany) does not seem to have found a viable alternative.

so it's not clear to me which problems can be described as being in house.

That same source says:

Quote:The A400M program has so far been a never-ending nightmare for Airbus accountants, costing €5 billion to date; following the company’s statement that the financial impact of the latest A400M delays could be significant, Airbus’ stock price has dropped since April 28th, when it issued the following statement: “Overall, the cost-at-completion assessment will need to be adapted accordingly, but at this stage there is not a sufficiently mature view of the technical, commercial and industrial consequences and their potential impact on the financial statements, which could be significant.”

The risk appears endless for Airbus, pressured by governments and investors on the one hand, and faced with numerous manufacturer and subcontractor-caused faults on the other.

It's interesting on how the focus is on how much this is costing Airbus, when in reality it is costing the taxpayers the most. The militaries are having to run old ships like Transall longer than desired and/or using alternates like C130 (UK, FR) and C17 (UK). If A400M had been delivered anything like on time and on budget then these other costly options would not be needed.

The gun is NOT a precious symbol of freedomIt is a deadly cancer on American societyThose who believe otherwise are consumed by an ideologyThat is impervious to evidence

All the major A400M problems appear to be linked to manufacturers with a strong link to the US ( respectively the "Coalition of the Willing". CASA project leader hiding excess weight to begin with, BAE and Hispano Suiza for botching the FADEC software, Allenia/GE for bad gearbox material, ... )

Quoting WIederling (Reply 5):All the major A400M problems appear to be linked to manufacturers with a strong link to the US

Some really spurious thoughts, IMHO. The real issue to me isn't the failings of the past, to me the real issues are the failings of the present, such as inability to produce frames on schedule, inability to deliver frames that can support missions such as self defense, helicopter refueling, paratrooper deployment, etc. If there were such deep seeded issues as you suggest, they should have been dealt with long ago. The real issue is that it is now 2016 and we do not see the program moving past earlier problems, instead we see it being overtaken by earlier problems.

The gun is NOT a precious symbol of freedomIt is a deadly cancer on American societyThose who believe otherwise are consumed by an ideologyThat is impervious to evidence

Quoting WIederling (Reply 5):All the major A400M problems appear to be linked to manufacturers with a strong link to the US ( respectively the "Coalition of the Willing". CASA project leader hiding excess weight to begin with, BAE and Hispano Suiza for botching the FADEC software, Allenia/GE for bad gearbox material, ... )

A bit of sabotage, maybe?

That is, without question, the most idiotic post I've ever read on this site.

I've read a lot of WIederling's posts, and there's some solid info in them, along with some really wild-eyed anti-US content, but of course there's a lot of wild-eyed pro-US content here on this site too, so in my mind it kind of balances out...

Bottom line, I'd love to have a beer with WIederling at his pub of choice should the opportunity ever arise. It might be one of the most interesting steins I've ever raised...

The gun is NOT a precious symbol of freedomIt is a deadly cancer on American societyThose who believe otherwise are consumed by an ideologyThat is impervious to evidence

I agree it's a remarkable achievement and I'll cede the point..it's the most idiotic anti-American comment I've ever read on this site. In hindsight I recall a few pro-American or anti-European comments that were equally stupid. Some of them really do make you wonder if there's a fully intact and functional brain stem directing the key strokes.

"German government sources said on Tuesday that Berlin is not considering cancelling the troubled A400M programme but is looking at acquiring other transport planes since the A400M cannot land at small airports."

Whats going on with the field performance?? Is it now not meeting its promised spec's?

Quoting mffoda (Reply 15):This part of the article seems to have went unnoticed here...

"German government sources said on Tuesday that Berlin is not considering cancelling the troubled A400M programme but is looking at acquiring other transport planes since the A400M cannot land at small airports."

Whats going on with the field performance?? Is it now not meeting its promised spec's?

dimensional limits ( like wingspan ) for the A400M should give a hint what size of airfield is considered
as small here.

IMU the A400M borrowed a lot from the C160 landing gear and has similar capabilities.

Quote:France has written to Airbus pressing it to say whether problems with Italian-built gearboxes and other threats to the A400M's military effectiveness will be resolved this year, but Airbus has declined to give that assurance, the people said.

With urgent needs in sub-Saharan Africa and Iraq, France has raised concerns about three main problems hampering the troop and heavy equipment carrier: gearbox flaws that require the planes to be checked every 20 flight hours, incomplete defensive systems and limits on certain types of parachute operation.

Asked if Airbus had been able to give clarity on resolving them, one person familiar with the matter said, "No, not right now, and especially not in the required timetable, which is by the end of this year".

And suggests that not only is the gearbox an operational issue but also has production issues:

Quote:Then early this year a crack was found inside a power gearbox (PGB) made by General Electric's (GE.N) Italian unit Avio Aero, leading to tough new inspections.

"It is currently the main problem and it generates uncertainty about the number of aircraft that can be delivered this year, because it is still unknown how many PGBs Avio can provide," a person close to the project said.

Avio's Turin factory "must be modernized," the person said, adding that things had improved since GE bought it in 2013.

Not sure if France is positioning for penalty payments or not.

The gun is NOT a precious symbol of freedomIt is a deadly cancer on American societyThose who believe otherwise are consumed by an ideologyThat is impervious to evidence

Quoting Revelation (Reply 21):And suggests that not only is the gearbox an operational issue but also has production issues

I thought the engine gearbox was going to continue building hours on the test stand while it took the 1 to 1.5 year time frame to certify the software for the engine.

I question how do you miss your testing and QC procedures to the point that a gear box can only handle 20 hours between inspections?
The additional test time they had with waiting for the software would indicate the engine/gearbox should have had enough hours to the point of being mature.

Somewhere I thought it was mentioned that since the inboard and outboard props rotated in opposite direction, their gear boxes were reversed internally.. if so I suspect more time was spent proving one direction assuming that the other gear box was a mirror copy.. which it appears it is not.. and the difference causing the problem may be a .0001 misalignment, or an oil line not supplying oil to exactly the right spot.

If I may respectfully offer my opinion as a non-aviation professional (but a program-mangement professional with 20+ yr experience in kicking and coaxing multi-partner ventures down the road).

The root cause of the TP400-D6 woes is organizational, and lies in the left-most part of this diagram:

The power gear box (grey in the diagram) was outsourced to Avio, which is not a member of the EPI Europrop consortium (nor is controlled by any of the members). The consortium itself was a politically-driven entity, assembled with the sole purpose of building the engines for the A400M: the individual members have extensive technical know-how and expertise, but the consortium itself had no corporate identity, and no member was assigned "lead integrator" role.

Now, the power transmission between the most powerful turboprop engine in the (western) world and a *huge* propeller is a critical area (having two counter-rotating versions on each aircraft doesn't make matters any simpler, too), and when pushing the technological envelope problems *will* arise. An external supplier with problems and without a clear and effective reporting hierarchy to report to is a sure recipe for trouble in any project management book.

The political decision to build vs. buy from P&W Canada was sound? Sure. Individual EPI consortium members were technically competent? Sure. Was Avio a technically competent supplier? Sure. Basic program management principles were applied? Nope. And here we are...

I was once accused of "beating dead horses": it looks like this particular corpse should have been buried a little deeper.

while some problems are supplier integration issues.. these are mainly interface issues, where as this appears to be strictly a hardware issue.. especially since one one prop spin direction is affected.

I think blaming Avio's problem on not being a member of EPI is stretching it a bit.. if they were a member the problem probably still would have occurred

Going through the hands of various financial locusts ( Carlyle here ) has had deep impact
on other Airbus suppliers. ( and required strong remedial activities to fix. )
I'd still not exclude a bit of sabotage here from interested parties even when posters from select
nations denounce that as ultimate dumbness.

Quoting kanban (Reply 27):...if they were a member the problem probably still would have occurredOf course, but in a challenging hardware project, hardware problems *do* occur. All the difference lies in how problems are managed, and this *is* an "interface issue", as you put it: you can act decisively, and put problems behind you, or you can kick the can down the road (at least to some degree), and problems will come back to bite your behind. Without a clear and effective reporting hierarchy, the difference at decision time is blurred at best.

Power gear box problems run back to the very beginning of engine testing in 2010, and Avio has gone back to the drawing board several times for significant re-designs. This, from a (technical) program management perspective, is in itself an unmistakable red flag that needs to be addressed *by the customer* (in this case, the EPI consortium). The lack of a clearly defined responsibility in managing Avio as a supplier let a sequence of reactions become the "solution" (an unsatisfactory solution, as of today).

I am sure Avio is fully qualified for the job and *will* eventually solve the gearbox problems: program management is all about *how* you get to the solution.

Quoting WIederling (Reply 28):I'd still not exclude a bit of sabotage here from interested parties A bit of Occam's razor says failure to apply basic program management practices was enough to put us Europeans in this bind. No need to invoke a sabotage theory.

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Quoting jollo (Reply 29):This, from a (technical) program management perspective, is in itself an unmistakable red flag that needs to be addressed *by the customer* (in this case, the EPI consortium). The lack of a clearly defined responsibility in managing Avio as a supplier let a sequence of reactions become the "solution" (an unsatisfactory solution, as of today).

pure assumption... I've worked with good program mangers and bad, ones that micro managed the program to extinction and others that managed from a thousand miles away.. while a good program management scheme is an advantage, the criticism here appears to be more "I told you so" and ego based than from a knowledgeable fact based position.

Quoting jollo (Reply 29):I am sure Avio is fully qualified for the job and *will* eventually solve the gearbox problems: program management is all about *how* you get to the solution.

I agree the solution will be found. The real question is when. It is suggested above that not only is there problems with the existing gearboxes, there's also a problem with production rate for new ones too. The good news is we haven't heard of more ISFDs since the inspection regime was put into place, the bad news is that the inspection regime is very frustrating to the customers.

I guess the good news is that the A400M was able to make it to Betty's birthday bash so things can't be that terrible.

The gun is NOT a precious symbol of freedomIt is a deadly cancer on American societyThose who believe otherwise are consumed by an ideologyThat is impervious to evidence

MSN33 delivered with self-protection system. Parachuting out of side door now approved. The aircraft can be used as tanker. The aircraft can use unprepared, gravel or soft runways.

Good news. Also via Google Translate:

Meanwhile, the engine consortium has reportedly an interim solution for the problems with the propeller gearbox found so that the current every 20 hours necessary inspections may be omitted. The modification is currently being tested and should be upgraded to the approval in July from September.

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The gun is NOT a precious symbol of freedomIt is a deadly cancer on American societyThose who believe otherwise are consumed by an ideologyThat is impervious to evidence

Paris – The European authorities are due to certify a modified Avio propeller gearbox in September, an interim solution required after a crack was found on the present equipment on the Airbus A400M airlifter, French defense-procurement chief Laurent Collet-Billon said....If the European Aviation Safety Agency delivers a certification of the propeller gearbox in “early September,” Airbus Defence & Space can fit the equipment to the engines and allow hundreds more flying hours between inspections, the chief of the Direction Générale de l’Armement procurement office said on Tuesday at the Eurosatory trade show, which closed June 17.

It sounds like this version of the fix will allow the interval between inspections to jump from 20 to "hundreds" of hours. It also sounds like the frames being currently delivered are to a higher standard than the earlier ones. Now it seems the main issue will be keeping production rate high enough whilst retrofitting these fixes to the frames already delivered.

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1 - Safran President and CEO Olivier Andriès confirms that A400M engine manufacturer Europrop International is flight-testing an 'intermediate fix', which is expected to be certified no later than early July, with the first customer engine retrofits to follow. A permanent fix will be available in 2017.